To the extent that my box office punditry has an origin story, one of the pit-stops of said story is watching pundits inexplicably expecting Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadowsto open with $30 million back in October 2000 and then crying foul when the dirt-cheap horror sequel debuted with "just" $13m. Yes, The Blair Witch Projectwas a stunning and groundbreaking marketing triumph, parlaying festival buzz and online publicity into a shocking $29m-on 1,100 screens wide debut in July 1999. But pretty much half of the people who saw The Blair Witch Project hated the film, which meant that even under the best circumstances the quickie cash-in sequel wasn't going to perform as well. Blair Witch 2 wasn't anything resembling "the best of circumstances."

I bring this story up to urge a little caution with the box office expectations for The Purge: Anarchy. Universal (a division of , Corp.) debuted The Purge in early June of last summer. The $3 million Blumhouse Productions/Platinum Dunes picture had a killer hook, a world where crime was legal for twelve hours on one night out of the year, and we were all a little shocked when the Ethan Hawke home invasion thriller opened with $34m, a record for a non-sequel R-rated horror film. But quite a few people hated The Purge and the film had one of the worst weekend-to-final multipliers in modern history, earning just $64.4m in America for a terrible 1.89x multiplier.

The good news is that the $3m picture earned $89m worldwide, making a sequel a no-brainer. So a year later we have The Purge: Anarchy. The film's main marketing theme is "Sorry the first film took place in a single house; this one is a lot more expansive!" The open question is whether audiences who sampled the first one and didn't care for it will still show up for this obviously wholly separate sequel that promises to give audiences more of what they wanted last time.

A Tomb Raider Trap is possible, but more likely it'll be something along the lines of Expendables 2. The sequel gave fans more of what they wanted the first time (a campier action blowout with more old-school action stars in the mix) and most of the fans, because they are fans, showed up again for a slightly smaller but still solid debut weekend. As such, I wouldn't expect The Purge: Anarchy to top last year's eye-popping $34 million debut. But a $25-$30m weekend wouldn't surprise me, with a stronger multiplier over its still probably brief run, especially as word gets out that this picture is more of what horror junkies wanted last time.

Nonetheless, even if it does play like Book of Shadows, we're still talking about a horror sequel that cost just $9m to produce. So basically anything over $20m for the weekend is a solid win, especially as the concept-nature of this franchise means they can just start from scratch again next year.